Nokia Lumia 920 takes on a DSLR with night photography

We know that the Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone captures impressive night photos. The optically stabilized camera with BSI sensor sheds light on some of the darkest scenes.

But how does it compare with a stand alone digital camera? Windows Phone Central Reader, Keng Chang, took the issue to task and compared his Canon 1DX DSLR to the Lumia 920. The results aren't all that surprising but does speak highly of the Lumia 920's low light performance.

Keng's set up was to mount the DSLR on a tripod and take a series of photos at various ISO levels with both the DSLR and Lumia 920. While the DSLR was supported by a tripod, the 920 images were taken handheld, using the tripod as support. First the Canon 1DX image.

And now the Lumia 920 image.

Taking a look at the settings for the brightest of shots, the Canon 1DX image was shot at f2.8 with a shutter speed of two seconds at ISO 800. The Lumia 920 on the other hand was shot at f2.0 at a shutter speed of one second at ISO 800.

The one second difference represents the one stop difference in the aperture settings of the two lenses. While the 1DX clearly sheds more light on the subject the 920 doesn't do a bad job of things. Keep in mind that the Canon 1DX has a full-frame sensor that is vastly larger than the 1/3" sensor of the Lumia 920.

Here's the full comparison captured by Keng using both Night and Auto Modes on the Lumia 920.

While the Lumia 920 is impressive in its own rights with optical stabilization, the DSLR gives you far more controls over the shot, has a better auto focus system, and overall has more horsepower. Even though these two cameras are in separate leagues, the Lumia 920 does a respectable job of things.

Reader comments

Nokia Lumia 920 takes on a DSLR with night photography

Damit folks, Lumia shot was NOT handheld! NO! Read the damn article! It was handheld with tripod as support! That's basically the phone was just held against the tripod but not screwed to it (no pun intended).

Apart from pointing that out, I'd like to point to something else - the noise level on Lumia shot is way higher than on Canon shot. And THAT is basically THE difference.

Apart from that, Lumia 920 is a beast phone shooter. It just cannot hold a candle to a DSLR in low light. It's stretching it too far to say it is comparable.

Its like comparing a Bugatti Veyron to a Ford KA yes they both have 4 wheels and 2 doors but thats where the comparison ends! so the 1DX and the 920 have a lens and digital sensor but thats it. nobody expects a camera phone to be as good as a £4'000 Purpose built camera but for what it is it does an exceptional job and way obove other phones on the market today. so for that it gets 10 out of 10 for being what it is a Camera Phone.

Comparing a 18.1 megapixel DSLR camera with a full frame sense on a tripod (costing $6800+) to a handheld Lumia 920 costing ~$450 locked to AT&T seems a tad unfair.
But the Lumia 920 does very well, its incredibly close in quality and making me start to doubt the benefit of buying a lower end camera at all, I'd like to have seen what the first shot would have been with the Lumia 920 on a tripod and given the same 2s shutter speed. I definitely do want one of these bad boys :)

Its all well and decent when shooting at light sources. This changes dramatically when there isn't light at all. Put them both on a tripod and shoot in the dark. My 5 year old $600 SLR destroyed the Lumia. It basically comes down to whether or not you can adjust all the parameters to get the shot with a half second shutter speed. The Lumia doesn't seem to go above that no matter what. Even just a whole second makes a ton of difference in these conditions, I can't figure out why they limit it so much.

That said, I do like the lumia's camera a lot, for what it is, a camera in a phone.

I am of course comparing the images at full resolution, not this scaled down trickery. There is a huge difference in quality even with the shots in this post. It isn't even a contest if you look at the photos as if you might put them on your wall.

If they really wanted to test againts a professionnal camera they shouldn't have taken a Canon. Canon's have one of the worst sensor of all the DSLR currently available. The sensor quality of a Canon DSLR is really bad!

Sure canon is lagging behind sony atm (Sony makes sensors for pretty much every other slr on the market except sigma). But they are like 10-20% worse, the 1dx is still waaaay better then any smartphone on the market. I'd say canons full frame sensors are still ahead of Sony's aps-c sensors, though same sensor size and generation Sony is ahead of canon.

And, ok, maybe saying Canon is "really bad" was a little too much, but still, I don't understand why so many people buy Canon when Nikon and Pentax are better, and Pentax camera's are much cheaper than Canon when we look at all the extra functions they contain compared to Canon.

Okay I see what your saying based on that review. However when was the last time you took a picture with no lens? On top of that anyone who will tell me that a pentax k-5 II is a better than the 1dx is a moron thus you have to take that link with a grain of salt.

Why did I opt for Canon? About ten years ago the Canon 300D was the first sub-$1000 DSLR. Pentax didn't have anything comparable on the market and I just didn't like Nikon's control layout. True, Pentax cameras are less expensive but Pentax has let their lens stock dwindle terribly and unless they've released something new recently, they don't have a camera than can match Canon's 1D series.

Does Pentax have a 10fps camera? A full-frame DSLR? Pentax makes some nice cameras but some of those extra functions you mention may not meet every photographer's needs. In my opinion, there's really not a bad DSLR on the market today. Some may suit your needs or tastes better than mine but any DSLR on the current market is capable of capturing fantastic images.

Many people are invested in lenses. And its only since Nikon and Pentax started using Sony sensors that they pulled so far ahead of Canon, in fact not to long ago Canon was ahead of Nikon. If you have 5,000 dollars invested in Canon lenses you aren't going to jump ship because one generation of cameras falls a bit behind the competitor. I imagine that if Canon can't make competitive sensors they will also end up switching to Sony like everyone else already has.

Well the 1Dx can go to ISO 256000 while the Lumia 900 maxes out at 800.... Its not a surprise that at the same ISO the two cameras take pictures that are of a similar brightness level... That's the point of ISO.

yeah thats simple mathematic logic. if both of them use iso 800 lens f2.0 or 2.8 or whatever, and the same amount of light coming thru the lens. it should give similar results :) and the 1dx you can crank it up to iso 10.000 and use it for very good pictures.

yes and a a sot taken with 1dx at 51000 iso with a $100 lens is better than the one taken with a lumia 920 at 100 iso...when i will get my lumia 900 i will post a face off between lumia and my canon 50d with 100% crop

maybe its hardly to tell on this little format pictures here. but if we look closer everything would be pro DSLR and contra lumia 920. nothing against the lumia 920 but even if it was way better, it can not be so good to be even to the canon 1dx or another DSLR which is pro class. this 1dx has an 36 x 24mm CMOS sensor, this is bigger then the whole lens on the lumia 920. you can not say that it would be even. a smartphone camera will alsway be an smartphone camera, a camera for fun not for pro pictures. :) and it should not be even, or are you willing to pay for a lumia 920 8.000-9.000$ with this capabilities to have a perfect picture.

I think it would be nice to have thrown the iPhone in there. Then shoot photos freehand without using the tripod for comparison's sake. The reason the 920 can take great photos at low light is the OIS, and using a tripod, theoretically, assuming you had controlover the shutter, you could get any camera to get pretty nice low light photos. So a freehand test would be really something to show how the OIS compensates, and still gives quality low light photos.

1. We know that the Lumia 920 isn't the best at daytime photos.
2. No one REALLY has a problem with daytime photos; any camera can handle that. However, many smartphone cameras (including the entire line of Android devices, really) struggles with low-light pictures, so finding something replaces unusable images with decent ones is a big enoguh upgrade to have slightly-lesser pictures in the daytime.

Amen to that! Low light has been my biggest issue since buying the dreadful camcorder jvc mz20 something. When I complained I was told it was meant for outdoor daytime:) I often shoot in crappy light since sunlight is hard to come by in Norway at this time of year

My daylight photos on my 920 are a delight. I add some sharpening and contrast and they are perfect. That suggests that the problem isn't with optics or hardware, but rather JPG processing which is said to be tweaked in the near future.

Why are you always comparing the L920 to the L900, the latter has a crap camera, I know cause I own it.
Compare it to the iphoe and GS3 so we can see if the L920 is better than those two. Comparing a DSLR to a phoen is like comparing bananas to oranges: they don't compete in the same league. The consummer isn't going to compare phone cameras to DSLR.
Ok, we got it that the theL920 is good compared to a DSLR, but this ads no value if teh iPhoen and teh GS3 have the same result!

Exacly I don´t understand why they used a tripod at all. They should have had both the DSLR and the lumia take pics hand held. I suspect the DSLR will not cope with the movement and it´s aperture will have to be smaller to have a blur free image. In other words, The lumia should be about as bright as the DSLR in a real world scenario because of OIS

I mainly did this to compare the noise generate by the ISO under the same lightning and setting. ISO 400 is very usable from Lumia 920. By hand-holding everything, I am introducing an random element that I can't reasonablly replicate everytime.

True, and that kind of proves my point. OIS and Pureview are aptly equipped to handle the randomness experienced in real life scenarios. I'm just amazed at how close they are given the differences and price points of each device. Given the constraints, Nokia has done an amazing job. DSLR quality? Maybe not, but the difference is not THAT great. Btw nice work and thank you for taking the time to do the comparison.

the 18-55 every rebel bring from factory sure it has OIS its the second switch you have in the lens is called IS and you can turn it on or off.
It uses a lense with a gyro that rotates to eliminate the shake from the pictures, depending on the lens you can get up to three full stops.